I don’t know if you’ve ever faced this situation in your life, but I have, and more than once. I’ve had ore than one fight enter my life that I could not turn away from — fights that simply needed to happen, because some things are simply worth fighting for, despite the odds, despite the near certainty of defeat; because then you can live with yourself, knowing you did what you could. Some fights are worth fighting for the fight itself, and if you don’t believe that, I’m not sure I even want to know you.

If you choose your fights based on winnability, that is not a criteria that I respect. I choose my fights based on what I believe is worth fighting for, and if I need to go down fighting, then so be it. But at least I can look myself in the mirror, because I did what my conscience demanded. I believe we all need to know which hill we’re willing to die on. And there may be more than one.

This means that I’ve lost, sometimes even disastrously (buy me a drink sometime and I’ll tell the stories), but I’ve never regretted fighting. That’s the beauty of struggling for what you believe in — you actually win even if you lose, as you’ve stayed true to yourself. Some people can’t say that, and that makes me sad.

So yes, I keep my defeats as close to my heart as my victories, perhaps even closer, as they are what makes me cry, even decades after, as my victories never seem to do. If you are wise in choosing your fights then the price you pay is to remember them for the rest of your life. Otherwise, they never meant anything to begin with. Choose wisely, knowing the price.

Although this is one of the much, much lesser fights of my life, and likely not one I will ever cry over, I will probably die not knowing if we ever won the fight against invasive species on the trails above the city of Sonoma, after decades of fighting. But I will die knowing I did everything I could. And that’s really all I need to know. At least this will be one of my much lesser defeats. I hope all of your defeats are much less than this. May they always and forever be.